Weber and Simmel talk about picture-frames

Abstract

The dialogue imagines that in early July 1914 Weber seeks guidance from Simmel about how to approach the visual arts when pursuing his ambition to produce a sociology of all the arts. During the previous decade, Weber became enthusiastic about medieval, renaissance and modern painting. We assume he has read Simmel’s The Picture Frame as well as two pieces about Rembrandt, later elaborated to become the third chapter of Simmel’s Rembrandt. Weber questions Simmel’s ideas about the autonomy of works of art and encourages Simmel to re-state them in the light of the relational implications of his ideas about form. They discuss how one might explain the origins of the use of picture-frames, how they work as form for content and their possibly positive implications for interaction under modern, metropolitan conditions of life.